A saccharide can be defined as a polyhydroxyaldehyde or a polyhydroxyketone usually of the formula (CH.sub.2 O).sub.n where n.gtoreq.3. Saccharides are commonly referred to as sugars. For example common table sugar is a dimer of one glucose molecule and one fructose molecule. Polysaccharides are defined as polymers of monosaccharides and are commonly referred to as carbohydrates. For example, starch is a polysaccharide which is a linear polymer of .alpha.-D-glucose with a (1.fwdarw.4) chemical linkage between monosaccharide units. Cellulose is a polysaccharide which is a linear polymer of .beta.-D-glucose (1.fwdarw.4). Chitin is a polysaccharide which is a homopolymer of N-acetyl-D-glucosamine (chitin is not a pure carbohydrate since it contains nitrogen).
Polysaccharides serve as nutrients, for example the starch found in many foods, and also as building materials, for example the cellulose found in wood and the chitin found in arthropod exoskeletons.
Previously, Mora and his colleagues (1958, 1960) polymerized various monosaccharides by heating the monosaccharides either with infrared radiation under vacuum conditions with 0.164% phosphorous acid (H.sub.3 PO.sub.3) or with tetramethylene sulfone and 0.164% H.sub.3 PO.sub.3. Mora and his group found that polyglucoses of 8,000 to 30,000 Dalton Molecular weights were formed under such reaction conditions.
Intense infrared radiation, or solvation in tetramethylene sulfone and the presence of a strong acid such as H.sub.3 PO.sub.3, however, constitute very harsh reaction conditions which moreover were employed by Mora et al (1958) only within a complicated glassware laboratory set-up.
Although Mora et al (1958) demonstrated the production of a polyglucose, the chemical linkages of Mora's polyglucose and other homopolymers were not characterized. This failure may have been the result of Mora and his group assuming that such linkages were a random array. Furthermore, Mora and his coworkers never tried to copolymerize more than one type of monosaccharide at a time.
An object of this invention was to produce thermal artificial carbohydrates under simpler, more gentle reactions conditions than that used by Mora et al. (1958,1960).
It was another object of this invention to produce artificial carbohydrates containing more than one type of monosaccharide.
It was also a further object of this invention to characterize the types of chemical linkages formed during application of the methods for preparation of the said artificial carbohydrates.